Listless
by Thorn In Your Side
Summary: Kenpachi's sword wasn't just quiet. It was comatose. And...ha! He wondered why she wouldn't speak to him.


**Listless**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. **

**A/N: Because there should be _consequences _for the way he treats that blade. **

**For those who don't know, Mt. Fuji is an _extinct_ volcano. **

**x.x.x.x.x.x.x**

And you wait and you wait and you wait.

A year? A decade? A century? It gets so hard to **_tell, _**after you lose your sense of time. You lose your sense of self. Then there's the doubt: has there ever been a sense of self?

What are you.

Here in your cool gray metal womb, you can't see yourself. You can't lift a hand to your face to prove your existence. You. Are. Nothing.

Even to the one whom you should mean the most!

He raises you, swings you and the blood warms the cockles of your heart (which isn't there) but to him you're a strip of dead metal like any other he might empower himself with. His reiatsu squishes you flat, preventing you from taking even a scrap of the fight and for a while you console yourself that at least this boiling anger eating you from the inside out (hopefully culminating in a swansong attack to his useless, ignoring face) is a sign that you're alive. You're something.

Of courses that isn't a whole lot better because what, exactly, are you? You think you're his sword. But then that's just the sort of thing you'd think. It gets so hard, so hard to simply believe. What are you waiting for? Hurry up and die.

Die!

000

In the beginning, his fingers feel like love itself. Neither of you have names, both of you have only each other. He weilds you and you like it. It's enough to exist; life is the ultimate reward. Fights are for survival. The two of you are the fittest. Hail Herbert Spencer and chop your way through this evening's menu.

The arrival of the child? Changes everything.

He gives her a name, he names himself, but does he even think to ask yours?

No!

And on that precise date you begin to forget. Your name hides itself in injured pride even from you. The deafening stone wall of eternity stretches on past the horizon, and you begin to wait.

For how long!

000

Back in the present...or is it the future? Whatever. Even the most interesting opponents don't rouse you anymore. You float in timelessness, and he doesn't notice. Just as well, really. If you awaken you'll only be allowed to watch as he fights, one against two, and wins. He doesn't need you.

You're expendable, so go expire in some godforsaken corner.

What are you waiting for? Another day of humiliating neglect? Your entire being takes up the hilt these days, huddling close to the place where his fingers touch. They feel less like love and more like sticks, rudely poking through the bars of your cage to remind you that there **_is_** more to be had than this maddening half life in a sword. You're a part of him, for crying out loud. Can't he feel his own soul rotting away?

You scratch and bite at his grip on the hilt but he doesn't. Even. Notice.

And you yourself wonder, what is there to notice?

What are you waiting for?

Is there no bottom to your bottle of patient endurance? Hasn't he emptied its contents a long while back?

Alright, that's it. Enough is enough. Camels and straws. The shit has hit the fan and you're covered in it. Throw in your towel; hit the showers. A watched Kenpachi never calls.

000

Neither does an unsupervised one, it appears.

Your mind numbs and flickers.

The deeper you retreat into yourself, the easier the sickening pain is to evade. You nap more or less constantly. Your limbs are cramped from an acute lack of exercise. Like he ignores you, you ignore your discomfort. The voice you never have used falls away in a few forgettable flakes of rust. The anger quells into a cold gel of resentment.

_Why hast thou abandoned thy blade?_

With nothing else to think about that question becomes an obsession. After a few dozen years it becomes too tiresome to think. And the gray womb yawns, and it's a tomb. And you're dead.

And that's the end.

Or it would be if nearly thirty-five years of coma later your unconscious hope doesn't present the solution: the perfect enemy.

The one that cuts his skin like rice paper.

The one that equals him in strength **_without _**a zanpakutou, and outstrips him when fighting two on one.

The opponent that will open wide the option of **_death_** so that Kenpachi glimpses his own mortality and needs your help. The opponent that will present a battle not to be won by one man, but a partnership.

Soul reaper and soul cutter.

Kenpachi and you with the face. You still have one of those? Shit. You'll need it, if this perfect stranger ever shows up. It's damn unlikely, but it keeps your hollow heart beating. If that's possible. If that's not an oxymoron.

000

Across a distance so vast it can't be encompassed in words, you hear a voice.

It's his voice. That man...**_your _**man.

You're annoyed. You're curious. You're exhilarated. Your anonymity crumbles into a small pile of grotty gravel and your cobweb accosted ears prick.

He says, "It's been so long that I forgot the pain of not having a name. I know this is real late in the comin' but...can ya tell me yers?"

At first you want to, you really do. Your nerves are lighting up from the need of it, your gore turns to flames with the relief of it. Kenpachi wants your name! ...But you can't remember what it was. In that empty space where your individuality used to lie there's a deep, hard pit of seething anger.

Kenpachi wants your name?

After all this time he's come crawling to you?

And you're, what, the goddess of forgiving empathy? You'll take him in with no complaint? Hell with that.

I said hell with that!

He waited too long. Too long! You suffered too much. Way too much! There can be no trust, no forgiveness, no acquittal of betrayal even if you had the power of speech to acquit with. Kenpachi can die his death alone, just as you've been dying all this time. Good riddance.

Better off without him.

You keep your own counsel. You don't turn to look at his face. You don't look at how he's changed. Your heart is broken, and he can't glue it back even if he knew how to reach it.

000

The real word for what you're doing right now is 'sulking'; there's no getting around that. But keep in mind it's a sulk heavy with justified angst. As in German for anger, not English for histrionic tragedy.

"C'mon, sword. Quit bein' such a broad. Heh, geddit? Broadsword. Seriously though, man. Temme yer friggin' name."

Insult upon insult upon degrading fucking insult! You almost prefer his silence.

"Yer such a pain...I mean don't ya gotta tongue? Speak t'me, dammit."

You long to throttle his stupid neck because **_no_** you don't have a tongue and whose fault is that? Who let your voice wither away? You yearn to kick his buns of steel but you master the impulse. The punishment has just begun. Let him beg for your company! Then you will see who needs whom.

"Yeesh ya just don' like me, do ya? Good job holdin' a grudge and all but how the hell am I s'posed to fight Ichigo all by m'self? Wake up. Damn it!"

You're pretty sure you love him. Him not knowing you interferes not at all with you knowing him. He hangs you on his sword rack above his thin futon and staring down at his sleeping face all night long is so not conducive to hateful thoughts. Deepest slumber can't turn that hunk of scar tissue into something angelic but he twitches in his dreams, for the love of god. Twitches and turns and sprawls all over his futon. It dawns on you that you've known this ape longer than you've known yourself and that this is the long haired beaut of a barbarian that beat the bloodlust out of Zaraki District, and then scooped a toddler into his muscle bound arms. And, um. What better reason?

000

The last time your eyes were open this wide you were just born. But then his reiatsu was stifling; now it melds seamlessly with you. It sizzles. It feels like love.

To be more accurate if feels like a burlap sack full of pumice but hey. Would you belong to him if you didn't like it rough?

The other guy's name is Nnoitra Jiruga.

Kenpachi senses something change and waves his sword around. His limbs seem so much more limber today...he waffles about being out of practice and getting reacquainted with his own muscles while you sit smugly in his hand and snicker. He still **_doesn't even notice _**but it's no grave error now; in fact it downright tickles you. His limbs are no better than they were yesterday. This fresh new feeling is the result of you leaving the hilt at long last and stretching across the blade.

With no voice you can't communicate and with no name you can't be released but guess the good news? He at least felt you move. You at least got a piece of the fight. Once you're on this path there's no turning tail. So what if you can't speak, you can still _sprechen_ his language. You can be the mute zanpakutou.

He'll just figure you out.

000

In Kenpachi we trusted and now we are busted.

"Uh, Zaraki-taichou...why did you bung your blade into the trash basket?"

A very pertinent question from a very puzzled subordinate. Kenpachi explains with excessive cheer.

"Screw it, I'm gettin' a new 'un. The worm in the 12th toyed with a few new boundaries of reason an' morality, so now we can get fresh zanpakutou custom made. I'mma get a blonde with a talented tongue." Wait, was that a double entendre? "If you know what I mean, Ikkaku."

He tips his third seat a much unappreciated wink. You start to refamiliarize yourself with that old cesspool of fury. Its more like a volcano. Mt. Fuji makes a comeback. And it's coming.

Oh, it's coming.

Ikkaku, you better be as hardy as you look...

The swaths of killing intent pulsing from you have him rapidly backing away from the trash can. Kenpachi cocks his head as if he's too stupid to see what's making the air shake with malice, and you wonder if he really is. The injustice of being saddled to and **_in love with_** such a resounding moron doubles your anger.

Ikkaku breaks into a cold sweat. Drops to his knees.

Kenpachi grins.

This is too much for you to take, and the roar of reiatsu that happens next shatters windows and cracks doorframes. Ikkaku's okay, mostly because Kenpachi stepped in front of him at the crucial moment. The brunet runs a finger up your blade and grips the hilt. Your burn your fiercest, and it apparently is so funny that he laughs.

"I knew it," he goes, "Yer a live one."

All the anger blinks itself out as you realize you've been had. You told him exactly what he means to you cleaner than you could've expressed with a melodious throat and an open thesaurus.

You. Want. Him.

Luckily he wants you too, so the rancid embarrassment of putting out first is greatly softened.

000

"I waited too long, huh?"

It occurs to you that you've never seen him his sober. Somber. Same difference. You're unsurprised at not liking it.

"Well it ain't no biggie. I'll name ya like I did Yachiru. You okay with that?"

Great idea. It'll be the crowning indignity of a long life fraught with abuse at his callous hands. With a _nom de plume _your powers won't be yours, but a mockery of what they could've been. Still. False identity is better than no identity at all. Yumichika's sword manages, so you will too.

"A macho kinda name."

You are going to **_fucking_** kill him.

"Female?" he asks as if the gender isn't one whose favors he enjoys on a regular basis. You want to know if that's a problem. He grins and assures you to the contrary.

"How's Mu Onna soundin' to yer ears?"

The nothing woman? Hmm. Better than some, and more apt than most. Is this conversation over yet?

"Can your release command be 'bend over'?"

You love him, you love him, you love him, inch by ludicrous inch.

**x.x.x.x.x.x.x**

**A part of me wondered if I should really name the sword but a larger, more intelligent part of me insisted I do. I'm pleased with the results. :D**


End file.
